After hours of freezing rain, Montreal woke up and its citizens discovered many scenes of desolation.
“Ah, cibolus! Richard Pagé cannot hide his astonishment at the extent of the damage. He has just seen a car on which a huge tree branch fell, in the Ahuntsic district, in Montreal.
With his granddaughter Julia, he walks to the convenience store in constant damage caused by the ice. “The TV doesn’t work, we’re doing like the old days,” says Mr. Pagé.
Tree branches everywhere: on sidewalks, in streets, embedded in cars. There is something to bring back memories of the ice storm in Montreal.
The magnitude is less, however. Depending on the sector, 30 to 40 mm of freezing rain fell on Wednesday in the Montreal area.
Owner of a woodlot, Frédéric Morin took out his chainsaw to partially clear rue de Châteaubriand. “There are a lot of old people living around. We’ll help if any ambulances want to come through,” he said, noting that blue-collar workers must be “overwhelmed.”
His son Étienne, on school leave, lends him a hand. “I am free and easily exploitable labor,” he laughs. However, they console themselves: they are among the “lucky ones” who still have electricity. In Montreal, just under half of Hydro-Quebec’s million customers are without power.
In the Rosemont district, the trees in Beaubien Park are devastated. “We hadn’t seen that there were so many broken branches,” said Lilian Lopez, who walks near the park with her partner. They have not had electricity since Wednesday evening. Marc-André Gonthier does not have much hope that it will be restored quickly, given the number of fallen trees everywhere in the neighborhood. “It’s sad,” he said.
